Twitter has accused Microsoft of breaching an agreement regarding the usage of its data, as outlined in a letter obtained by Reuters on Thursday. The legal representative of Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, has accused Microsoft of “unauthorized” access to Twitter’s data, which allegedly included sharing this information with government entities without consent in certain instances.
In the correspondence addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, requested that the tech company undertake an audit of its utilization of Twitter’s content. This letter was initially reported by the New York Times.
Twitter has not yet responded to a request from Reuters for comment.
The agreement between Twitter and developers includes enforced rate limits on the use of the platform’s application programming interface (API).
According to the letter, “Despite these limitations, the Microsoft Apps accessed Twitter’s APIs over 780 million times and retrieved over 26 billion tweets in 2022 alone.”
A spokesperson for Microsoft stated that the company received inquiries from a law firm representing Twitter regarding its previous engagement with the free Twitter APIs.
“We will evaluate these inquiries and respond appropriately. We anticipate continuing our long-term partnership with Twitter,” the spokesperson added.
Twitter’s claims emerge amid an ongoing conflict between Musk and Microsoft regarding the latter’s artificial intelligence initiatives.
Musk announced in April his intention to introduce an AI platform called “TruthGPT,” designed to compete with offerings from Microsoft and Google.
He has publicly criticized OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft and known for its chatbot ChatGPT, accusing it of “training the AI to lie” and suggesting that it has transitioned into a “closed source,” “for-profit” entity closely aligned with Microsoft.
Additionally, Musk has called out Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, for not prioritizing AI safety.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
